The 60-year-old star of Gangs of New York is known for being the only performer ever to win three best actor Academy Awards. He picked up his first playing writer and artist Christy Brown in My Left Foot, second for oil-obsessed businessman Daniel Plainview in There Will Be Blood, and third for playing the presidential lead in 2012’s Lincoln.

He earned two other Oscar nominations for Gangs of New York and In the Name of the Father.

So why retire? Day-Lewis has been characteristically low key and not given a reason. His spokesperson told Variety in a statement: “Daniel Day-Lewis will no longer be working as an actor. He is immensely grateful to all of his collaborators and audiences over the many years. This is a private decision and neither he nor his representatives will make any further comment on this subject.”

As well as building a reputation for being extremely selective in his film choices (only starring in six since 1998), Day-Lewis is known for going to extreme lengths for each role. He learned Czech to play a womanising doctor in 1984’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being, restricted himself to a wheelchair to play a cerebral palsy patient in My Left Foot, and stayed in character off camera during every film.

As Day-Lewis himself admitted during his 2012 Oscar Speech, “Since we got married 16 years ago, my wife Rebecca has lived with some very strange men.”

Yet there’s still one more upcoming film to see the method master in action: Day-Lewis’s final film Phantom Thread, set in the London 1950s fashion scene, is out in cinemas in Christmas 2017.

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But you never know, there’s always a small chance he isn’t retiring, just going full method to play a character who retires from acting.